Truth in advertising…

I have had quite a few people follow me on twitter recently that weren’t exactly people. They were organizations and schools. They were large groups of people that all somehow are tweeting with the same account. This, is a little unsettling to me and I’m not sure why.
 
I guess it is partially because I believe it is a little less than genuine to have a single voice represent an entire entity. I also believe that many groups are joining twitter simply to advertise that they are on twitter. This is even less genuine.
 
To me, an organization should encourage all of it’s members to become a part of a learning network. It should ask all of it’s employees to have heir own voices and then stream them all into a single place. The school should aggregate the conversation about learning in their space, not merely give updates as to the merits of their latest program changes.
 
You raise the level or discourse about any topic by giving that discourse an official channel. By asking all participants in an organization to tweet on behalf of that organization, you can actually find the pulse of what is going on. Which is, after all, the major goal of Twitter.
 
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Anything that can be archived, should be.

I was teaching yesterday using xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/horizon) and edmodo. I found myself trying to justify why I wanted to archive all of the learning going on in the room. As if somehow there were people watching and asking why I was doing what I was doing.
 
I waited, but no one asked the question.
 
In the end I want people to challenge my thinking. I want other teachers to ask what the virtue of chronicling all of the thoughts of students is. This is what I would have said, if anyone had put my pedagogy to the test:
 
Learning is not tangible. It isn’t something that all students just come to and recognize easily. It must be made visual and reflective. It must be made into an object to be manipulated. If we are not archiving everything for our students (or if they aren’t doing it themselves), how will they ever be able to say “I can use this.” If it we don’t save our students thinking, how can we ever know that it really happened? How can we know if they or we did a job woth doing?
 
Learning is not for a day or a class period. We need to stop treating it like it were.
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The Ripe Environment: The Most Powerful Learning

The Ripe Environment: Most Powerful Learning Podcast [ 12:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (173)

Although the podcast (which was somehow not recorded because I had the device set for line-in rather than mic… I am quite mad about it actually) for this post explains this prerequisite for The Ripe Environment pretty well, I would like to further outline it for those of you who don’t have 15 minutes to listen (or who can’t imagine all of the things I would have said, had the microphone actually worked).

I would like to start by saying that I do not actually have any problems with conferences, meetings, or workshops. In fact, they are one of the premier places that The Ripe Environment can exist. However, my contention is that The Ripe Environment cannot simply stay in that space. It has to transfer over into the times when no one else is around. It has to transfer into the individual mind, so that your own mind is a Ripe Environment for Authentic Learning. I know that probably sounds a little hokey, but I believe that there are many ways of thinking things through, some of which are more productive than others.

On the podcast (which, once again, is only in your imagination at this point) I use the metaphor of class time and conferences being a typewriter. Conferences exist in one particular place and time, as does the typewritten words on a page. They cannot be copied and disseminated in the ways that a blog post or wiki edit can be. There is something quite beautiful about words existing in only one place and an experience only being a singular event. Even in the capture of the backchannel, live-blogging or streaming of an experience, the experience held in one time. However, the true learning happens when one reflects upon the process, upon the environment.

The Ripe Environment does not end when the session is over. It never ends. The learning extends over the boundaries when it is made personal. When the singular experience is built upon with an eye toward a personal set of circumstances. Learning occurs when a resource is appropriated for your classroom. Learning occurs when a link is made (hyperlink or a synaptic link) to a website or person. Learning is occurs when an e-mail is sent off requesting a follow up or an invite to a google document is sent out.

These moments are not held in time. They are ongoing. They make sure that the Environment stays ripe rather than withers.

The Perfect Online Professional Development Community

I have really been thinking a lot about how to create an online community for all of the teachers in my school district who are as passionate about technology integration, reflection and collaboration as I am. The way that it stands, I feel so isolated in my quest for new and more effective ways of teaching. I know this is not the case, that there are probably hundreds of teachers who feel the same way, but that isn’t really much comfort when I don’t know who they are and I have no way of contacting them. I almost feel like I need to send out a classified ad: Young passionate teacher seeks the same in order to learn and collaborate about technology and pedagogy.

I can’t think of a better way to ask for a community than to create one and hope that other people join up. I have already run this idea by a few, more experienced, Edubloggers, Bud Hunt and Karl Fisch. They have both responded pretty well to the idea and are willing to help me get it off of the ground.

After my initial e-mails to my administration and these two great teachers/resources, I thought that there would be no way of stopping such a mammoth idea. My principal loved it, and the feeder area coordinator thought it would work well with some of our other goals. But last night, I received an e-mail from the Web Services manager of my district. In it he said that I should consider using two semi-crippled technologies (Firstclass and SchoolCenter) that teachers in my district are already fairly comfortable with (and the district has already paid for). I say that these are crippled technologies because they have real holes in their capabilities. They just can’t do everything that I want to do with this community.

Even with this minor setback, I have decided that I will not compromise (at least initially) my vision of the “Perfect Online Professional Development Community.” I would like to see just how collaborative, easy to use, scalable, social, and reflective I can make this experience for other teachers. So, without any further explanation, I would like to unveil what I think are the essential pieces of a new generation professional learning community.

A central portal will give you access to the following (I am thinking about using protopage):

1. A master blog that would guide discussion.
2. Blogroll
3. Recent Blog Articles (a la SuprGlu)
4. Archived Blog Articles (in a newsletter type format)
5. A Google Earth Mash-Up of all of the school represented in the community
6. Bios of the teacher bloggers (if they wish to include them) done in a social way so that collaboration is easier (an Elgg.org-type personal page)
7. A calendar for event planning (Skypecasts, Classroom Demonstration Webcasts, Classroom Picture Flickr Stream)

The other aspects of the community that will not be directly shown on the portal’s front page except for simply linking to them:

1. A Q+A section for both teaching questions and technical help questions (Ning.com has a great set-up for something like this).
2. A Digg-Style Article/Website recommender.
3. A Wiki for success stories of technology integration or improved practice (a little like David Warlick‘s Telling the New Story Wiki)
4. Walk-Throughs (screencasts) for how to create blogs, collaborate, etc.
5. A way of dealing with comments both attached to and unattached to their original posts. (co.mments.com has a pretty great strategy)
6. A professional development bookshelf (akin to either this one or this one)
7. A way of signing up for an e-mail RSS system for new posts (most teachers check their e-mail religiously)
8. A belief statements wiki about technology or teaching in general for certain collaborating members or individuals (this could be a running list of belief statements and/or a running list of questions that these belief statements beg to be answered. I also like the idea of using standpoint.com somehow).
9. A system for sharing lesson plans and ideas (both formatted and unformatted) including a collaborative document center.
10. A cross-school project starter (partnering up similar teaching styles)

Questions I still have about how to get this done:

1. How do we get as many different positions represented in this community (principals, core teachers, librarians, elective teachers, etc.)
2. Should we try to protect anonymity on the blogs?
3. Just how much do most people know about these technologies? Will it be like starting from scratch for most people? And if so, should I send out a formal (or informal) survey about these ideas (What have you done in your classrooms with technology? Do you like to create you own lessons? How much do you enjoy reflection? Do you want feedback on your classroom ideas from other teachers? How worried are you that this is going to take too much of your free time? How many of you already blog?)?

Well, that is pretty much it. I would like to make this project as appealing and voluntary as possible, so that everyone who is in the community has a lot of buy-in. Let me know what you think of this grand scheme. What is possible and what is not possible?